The TV, and Moore’s Law-like Innovation?

The amount of innovation the TV has seen in the past year, and last couple of years, is astounding.

If you can think back to the pre big-screen HD movement, consumers more or less purchased TVs with a bigger (and really heavy) screen, once color became common.

But look at four recent developments, and one wonders if the TV can evolve to match the computing industry’s Moore’s Law-like speed— aka the opportunity for major innovations about every 24 months, or less.

Sure, the HD phenomena happened a while ago. But like my incredible vision after laser eye surgery many years ago that still sometimes awes me (especially at night when I can see the time from across the room), I still am occasionally wow’d by the picture I get on my TV.

How about three more recent innovations. First, today’s news. Smart TV, brought to you buy Intel (and the Atom processor), Google, Logitech and Sony. I’m not sure some of the ideas are going to take off, like a big public screen to IM or Tweet versus my nice private screen on my laptop or netbook, but the beauty of this is there will now be endless ideas, apps, searching, personalizing and other software people can innovate with the TV.

Second, 3-D TV. Have you experienced it? I don’t have one, and wearing the glasses is a bit annoying. But it’s a very cool experience, and it’s only just the beginning, as content is limted and the price is a bit high.

It’s a fascinating time in TV land. According to Google, more than 4 billion people are TV users. That’s higher than cell phone and computer users combined. Americans watch TV about 5 hours a day, and spend many more hours on the Internet – often doing both at the same time.

So opening up the smart TV; letting people seamlessly beam their laptop screen and content to their TV, and viewing 3-D, high-definition content is upon us. And my guess is, we will see 10X more innovation on the TV in the next five years versus the past 5-10 years.